Every parent of school-age kids has a similar shopping list this month: Pencils, glue sticks, highlighters, notebooks, dry-erase markers, crayons, sharpies and erasable pens… and don’t forget the earbuds and iPad stylus. Most items are not recyclable, or biodegrable, and represent just a fraction of the resources that go into educating kids. Schools create a […]
Commute Options
Posted inBend Nest
It’s Not a Magic School Bus. It’s a Walking School Bus!
Students of schools in Deschutes, Jefferson, Crook and Northern Klamath counties can now participate in walking school buses—a fun and organized way for students to safely get to school, by walking or biking in a group. Much like a school bus, classmates are picked up along the way to school. Commute Options, a local non-profit […]
Posted inCulture
Bend Open Streets: Spring edition
We’ve got Mother’s Day planned for you.
Bring the whole family downtown on Sunday May 13 (Mother’s Day) for Open Streets and free fun. Open Streets is a worldwide initiative that temporarily closes streets to automobiles for fun physical activities. The City of Bend tag-teams with Commute Options to host this event at two activity hubs, one at the Environmental Center and […]
Posted inCulture
Brian Potwin
Bike guy, active transportation
manager—and a lot more
“I’m an experienced bike rider. It’s easy for me to bike around town. But it can ge hard for others. They don’t find it easy, and I want to be able to share that experience with them.” — Brian Potwin M any Bendites might think of Brian Potwin as “The Bike Guy,” since he works […]
Posted inNews
Beavers on Bikes & Buses
Locals worry about increased traffic with the opening of OSU Cascades. The school’s solution? Skip the car all together.
The Century Drive roundabout next to the new Oregon State University Cascades campus is one of the most-used in the city of Bend—and with the fall opening of the school, that means even more traffic in the area. As the student population grows to between 3,000 and 5,000 by 2025, there will likely be even […]
Posted inNews
Incarcerated Adults Address Chronic Illness
Living Well workshops transform prisoners’ lives, save taxpayers’ money
A four-year-old program is saving taxpayers more than $10,000 per prisoner, per year, and making life better for people with chronic illnesses living behind bars. Since adopting the Living Well with Chronic Conditions program (LWCC) in 2012, more than 1,000 incarcerated adults in Oregon have improved their health and well-being by completing the course. According […]
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
Summer Outside Events
June-August Bend Elks Baseball BASEBALL—With over 17 years of baseball history, the Bend Elks are more than ready to represent their hometown this season. Games at the Vince Genna Stadium started early in June, and run through the end of August. Catch your tickets for as low as $6 or go big with a season […]
Posted inNews
Mean Streets
Cyclists say Bend’s roads are not bike-friendly
on a recent Friday, Jim Slothower was riding his bike from Bend to Redmond for a family dinner. The experienced cyclist says he was making good time, about 25 miles-per-hour along Obsidian Road, when an approaching car turned left directly in front of him. “I swerved to right to avoid head-on [collision] but went down […]
Posted inOpinion
The Wheel Thing
September is the Bicycle Transportation Alliance statewide Bicycle Commute Challenge, in which Oregon work places compete to see which can bike more during the month, locally, in October, Commute Options host a similar event, the Drive Less Connect—all of which, to us, seems to like a perfect opportunity for the mayor and city council to […]
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
More Than Just the “Bike Guy”
Commute Options executive director is pushing
active transportation reform
The office space at Mill Quarter feels almost like the interior of an M.C. Escher drawing: Sets of wooden stairs climb to lofts, and hallways traverse through open-office spaces, and still another set of stairs climbs to yet another office. The space houses several well-known nonprofits—Trout Unlimited, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Cultural Oregon—and it is […]